Supporting education and research Open Access in the UK Neil Jacobs, JISC, UK

Supporting education and research The current situation: a benchmarking exercise International meeting on Institutional Repositories (IRs) last week in Amsterdam Questionnaires on IRs and OA completed from: –Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, UK, USA. Results to appear in D-Lib article

Supporting education and research Some UK statistics 31 ‘eprint’ IRs in the UK (Southampton registry) 144 universities in UK Average number of “items” in an IR = 240 Of these items…

Supporting education and research OA items in the UK 1 74% articles, working papers, technical reports, etc. –57% published articles, book chapters, conference proceedings 16% books, theses 1% datasets 4% video, music, etc. 5% other %

Supporting education and research OA items in the UK 2 16% Humanities and Social Sciences 12% Life Sciences 25% Natural Sciences 41% Engineering / Computer Science 6% Other %

Supporting education and research OA items in the UK 3 Proportion of total UK research output: 2% Humanities and Social Sciences 1% Life Sciences 5% Natural Sciences 15% Engineering / Computer Science (perhaps the least reliable of the figures!)

Supporting education and research Software used 24 Eprints 6 DSpace 2 locally developed (excluding CCLRC) + much interest in Fedora

Supporting education and research UK National Policy No national policy, but debate: –Select committee: recommended OA –UK Government: “A level playing field” and statements: –Scotland: Scottish Declaration on Open Access

Supporting education and research National situation Scottish Declaration signed by all Scottish universities + SLIC However, most of the support to set up institutional repositories in the UK has come via JISC: –SHERPA Project - 20 repositories in top research universities –Many other universities and colleges implementing institutional repositories –JISC “Digital Repositories Programme” – exploring issues, frameworks and pilot services

Supporting education and research Funders Research Councils (RCUK): statement being drafted –likely to have a major impact (major advocacy push planned by Sherpa, SPARC, JISC…) –Promote discussion and action at senior level within institutions Wellcome Trust policy –already having a major impact, stimulating debate and raising awareness –UK-PubMed initiative

Supporting education and research Institutions University of Southampton –Open Access policy –Core funding of institutional repository –“Institutional Repository will now become an integral part of the electronic library service at Southampton” –Link to RAE (…) Result: Southampton repository holds as many items as the rest of the UK put together.

Supporting education and research Research Assessment Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) –every few years …1996, 2001, 2008 Major research funding follows RAE Method: –Institutions submit data on: four research publications per researcher other contextual information on research –Panels review data (including the impact of publications)

Supporting education and research RAE and institutional repositories Institutional repository can: –Boost impact (citation counts) of open access research publications –Act as a management tool to ensure institutional RAE submission is efficient JISC funding technical work linking DSpace and Eprints software with RAE systems.

Supporting education and research Neil Jacobs JISC Executive